In conventional integrated circuit (IC) designs using a circuit-level approach, designers place electrical components such as field-effect transistors (FETs), diodes, resistors, capacitors, or other active or passive components on a layout and arrange interconnections therebetween.
However, as the number of components in an IC increases, a circuit design approach that allows an IC designer to focus on a higher abstract view of the circuit rather than the circuit-level approach helps the IC designer to more efficiently design a particular IC. For example, an IC designer uses a hardware description language (such as VERILOG or VHDL) or a programming language (such as C language or MATLAB Language) to describe the functionality and input/output terminals of the IC. Subsequently, a synthesizer converts the IC design generated using the hardware description language or the programming language into a circuit netlist, and a layout tool converts the circuit netlist into a layout for forming the IC.